


In These Walls

by OdioEtAmo



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Affectionate friends (ahem), Archie is still recovering on the inside, Fluff, Gratuitous Hand Holding, Horatio worries about him, M/M, my two sorry lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 03:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18130070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OdioEtAmo/pseuds/OdioEtAmo
Summary: As he has given his Parole, Horatio and his men have returned to the Spanish POW camp. Archie ponders briefly on the best and worst parts of his life.





	In These Walls

Archie had been so naive to think that life wouldn’t take this pattern. He had held that the glory of the sailor’s life would be insurmountable. He had thought it would have been a lot jollier than this. Then again, the jollity was at least partially down to him too. He could do better. Archie traced his fingers along the cracked plaster of the cell wall. He had been through purgatory, reached hell, and then, briefly, took a look at heaven. Dust drifted through the air, illuminated by the sun that still shone through the bars. He had come back to hell.

“Penny for your thoughts, Archie?” Horatio called down distantly from the bunk. 

“I think…” He glanced up, drawn out of his reverie. “I think you haven’t a penny to give for them.”

Horatio swung his feet over the side of the bunk. 

“Right.” He said decisively. “You’re being existential, don’t lie.” He slipped down from his bunk and hovered determinedly above Archie, like some kind of tall exotic bird with an anxious tendency. His fingers drummed against his leg, full of that undeniable energy that propelled him.

Archie chuckled to himself. “I hardly think that counts as existential, Horatio. There’s nothing in those pockets of yours but dust and lint.”

“Archie.” He said, in that way of his. It was funny, Archie could conjure up his own name in his head, and he could hear it- just how Horatio said it. The enunciation. He could watch those lips move, as real as anything. 

“What, Horatio?” Archie replied, inclining an eyebrow flippantly. 

“I’m- sorry.” He shifted awkwardly. “That I brought you back here.” 

Archie couldn’t take that lying down- he sat up instead. Horatio’s dark eyes bore into him. 

“Nonsense.” He smiled, as though this old place could not touch him. “I came back here on my own accord. You know that.” 

“I do.”

“Then you needn’t get so antsy! Really Horatio, I’m hardly your ward. I don’t need you to look after me.” 

That was a sour thing to say, and a lie. Both of them knew it, and it gave Horatio this pained expression. Archie Kennedy was a hole that good humour fell into. It happened sometimes, like this. Without warning. Hurting him and whoever else dared to bring their cares near him. 

“Horatio…” He said, without having prepared any other words to come after. He was trying to be better. That malaise of his was as habitual as it was anything else. He knew it wasn’t- oh, what was the word? 

Constructive. That was it. He would build no fine ships, sow no seeds with his anger.

“Archie.” Horatio spoke again, quieter this time. Softly. “If I had not given your word for you, you wouldn’t have had to come back here. To this place. You might have stayed on the Indie.”

“And would they have let us go out at all, if you hadn’t?” Archie responded in defiance. “More likely, we would all have stayed here, your duchess would be dead, and the Indie would have kept sailing without you or I. I was glad enough to stand on her decks again, just like you said. Even if it was only for a day.”

That pained expression had not been dispelled. Not yet. 

Archie reached out, clasped his hand. It was cool, just as the walls and stones of their little cell were. 

“Sit down, ‘ratio, won’t you?” 

Horatio sat down. Their fingers were still intertwined, curled tightly together. Archie fancied that those cold hands held as strongly as any knot, tethering them together, as deeply tangled as their lives had become when a very green young midshipman had boarded Justinia at Spithead. 

“Horatio, you made the right decision. And I did too, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He said fondly, and when he said it like that, it was true. 

Horatio sat, kicking one foot at the floor mechanically, his eyes following the lop-sided gambit of a fly that was weaving such a lackadaisical path across the cell that it might have been drunk. 

“Very queer these spanish flies. Not a bit like our english flies, eh?” Archie smirked, to no audience. 

A silence fell over them as clouds rolled across the sky outside, obscuring their little sunbeam. 

“How will you bear it, Archie?”

A beat passed, punctuated by the pulse he could feel in Horatio’s thumb. 

“Easier than I have. Now that I know there’s some pride and strength in me, I daresay I could go on for quite a while here. Even without such beautiful company as we had the first time around. I’ll borrow some of your resolve and contrive to find a little bit of heaven right here.”

“Oh don’t mock me. It was a serious question.” Horatio frowned, and there was enough frustrated child in his expression that Archie couldn’t help smiling. 

“I’m serious, you know. Who’s to say there couldn’t be a sliver of the divine hidden somewhere in these walls? If you set yourself to finding it, I’m sure you would. You have that sort of mind.” 

Horatio snorted, but this too was a truth both of them knew, or ought to. He had set his mind to far less plausible matters and come out triumphant, and in this light, as the sun burst out, dying Horatio’s dark curls golden, Archie speculated that heaven in a dry, arid cell might not be quite as distant as he had once thought; he might at least find it in his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, thank you for reading my first Hornblower fanfic. It's been some years since I last wrote fanfiction for anything.  
> I do hope you enjoyed it~


End file.
